OF MULES AND MEN

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 9, Issue 79, 27 May 1946, Page 6

OF MULES AND MEN

“Over there,” so we are told by “Kansas Business” trailed a man behind a mule. Said the man to the mule: “Bill, you are a mule, the son of a jackass, and I am a man made up in the image of God. Yet here we work, hitched up together year in and year out. I often wonder if you work for me or I for you! Verily, I think it is a partnership between a mule and a fool, for surely I work as hard as you. Ploughing, we cover the same distance but you do it on four legs and I do it on two, therefore I do twice as much work per leg as you. Soon we’ll be preparing for a corn crop. When the crop is harvested, the landlord gets onethird and you get one-third and the balance is mine. You consume all your portion except the cobs, while I divide mine among six children, seven hens, two ducks and a banker. If we both need shoes you get them. Bill, you are getting the best of me. Is it fair for a mule, the son of a jackass, to swindle a man, a lord of creation out of his substance? Why you only plough and help to cultivate the ground, and I must cut shuck, and husk the corn, while you look over the fence and heehaw at me. About the only time I am a better man than you is on election day for I can vote and you can’t; and after election I realise that I was fully as great a jackass as your papa. And that is not all, Bill. When you are dead that is supposed to be the end of you. But me! The parson tells me when I die I gotta go to hell yet; unless I do just as he says. And most of what he says keeps me from getting a kick out of life. Tell me, Bill, considering these things, how can you keep a straight face and look so dumb and .solemn? Moral: Don’t let the people who should hold the reigns, be controlled by the Ass in the plough.